'I have written a long rigmarole all about myself; but an outpouring is sometimes a relief, and you have borne with me often enough to do so now. My poor Clara's pardon, and some kind of clerical duty, are my chief wishes; but my failures in the early part of the year have taught me how unworthy I am to stir a step in soliciting anything of the kind. Did I tell you how some ten of the boys continue to touch their hats to me? and Smith, the butcher's son, often comes to borrow a book, and consult me on some of the difficulties that his father throws in his way. He is a fine fellow, and at least I hope that my two years at the school did him no harm. I was much impressed with the orderliness at Ormersfield Sunday-school. I wish I could have got half as much religious knowledge into my poor boys. I walked through your turnips in the South field, and thought they wanted rain. Frampton tells me the Inglewood harvest is in very good condition; but I will see the bailiff, and give you more particulars, when I can be better spared from home for a few hours. Kitty's assistance in writing has discomposed these last few lines.
'Yours ever, 'J.R.F.D.'
Clara turned away and groaned aloud several times as she read; but all she said, as she gave it back to Louis, was, 'What is to be done? You must talk to my uncle.'
'Ah, Clara! young gentlemen of the nineteenth century make but a bad hand of the part of benevolent fairy.'
'I don't think my speaking would be of any use,' said Clara. 'Oh, if this only would have been a boy!'
Lord Ormersfield undertook to sound Mr. Dynevor, and found an early opportunity of asking whether he had heard of poor James's misfortune. Yes, he had known it long ago. No wonder, with such a temper. Kept it from the child, though. Would not have her always hankering after them.
Was he aware of his great distress and difficulties? Ha, ha! thought so! Fine lady wife! No end of children-served him right!-to bring down his pride.
Lord Ormersfield hazarded a hint that James had seen his errors, and the school was no longer in the way.
'No, no!' said Oliver. 'Too late now. Drink as he has brewed. He should have thought twice before he broke my poor mother's heart with his cantankerous ways. Cheveleigh beneath him, forsooth! I'm not going to have it cut up for a lot of trumpery girls! I've settled the property and whatever other pickings there may be upon my little Clara-grateful, and worthy of it! Her husband shall take Dynevor name and arms-unless, to be sure, he had a title of his own. The girl was much admired at Rome last winter, had a fair offer or two, but not a word will she say to any of them. I can't tell what's in her head, not I!'
And he looked knowingly at Lord Ormersfield, and willingly extended his stay at Aix-la-Chapelle, letting Fitzjocelyn organize expeditions from thence to Liege and other places in the neighbourhood.
The two cousins were so glad to be together, and the Earl so much pleased that Louis should have anything which gave him so much delight as this meeting with his old playfellow, that he did all in his power to facilitate and prolong their intercourse. He often sacrificed himself to Oliver's prosings on the Equatorial navigation, that the two young people might be at liberty; and he invited Clara to their early breakfast and walk before her uncle wanted her in the morning. These were Clara's times of greatest happiness, except that it gave her a new and strange sensation to be talked to by his lordship like a grown-up-nay, a sensible woman. Once she said to herself, laughing, 'He really treats me almost as if I were poor Mary herself.' And then came another flash: 'Perhaps he would even like me on the same terms!' And then she laughed again, and shook her head: 'No, no, my Lord, your son is much too good for that! Uncle Oliver would not have looked so benignant at us when we were sitting in the gardens last night, if he had known that I was giving Louis all my Lima letters. I wish they were more worth having! It was very stupid of me not to know Mary better, so that we write like two old almanacs. However, my letter from hence will be worth its journey to Peru.'
Clara's heart was several degrees lighter, both from the pleasure of the meeting and a suggestion of the Earl's, upon which she had at once acted, and which seemed, even as she laid pen to paper, to bring her somewhat nearer to her brother.
Her letter arrived at No. 5, on the next Monday morning at breakfast- time. It did not at first attract the attention of James. The Sunday exertions had again left a mental and physical lassitude, showing how much care and privation had told upon his strength; and Isabel's still tardy convalescence weighed him down with anxiety for the future, and almost with despair, as he thought of the comforts for want of which she suffered, though so patiently and silently dispensing with them. To his further vexation, he had, on the previous Saturday, seen Charlotte receiving at the back-door an amount of meat beyond her orders; and, having checked himself because too angry and too much grieved to speak at once, had reserved the reproof for the Monday, when Charlotte brought in her book of petty disbursements.
Failing to detect the obnoxious item, he said, 'Where's the account of the meat that came in on Saturday?'
'There, sir!' said Charlotte, indicating the legitimate amount, but blushing violently.
'That was not all?' he said, with a look of stern, interrogation.
'Oh! if you please, sir, that was nothing!'
'This will not do, Charlotte! I can have nothing taken into my house without being paid for. I insist on knowing what you could mean?'
'Oh, sir!' tearfully exclaimed the girl, 'it is paid for-I'll show you the account, if you will-with my own money. I'd not have had you hear of it for the world; but I could not bear that nurse's insinuations about her meat five times a-day-she that never nursed nothing like a real lady before! But I meant no harm, sir; and I hope you'll excuse the liberty, for I did not mean to take none; and I'm sure I'm quite contented for my own part, nor never meant to complain.'
'I know you did not, Charlotte! You are only too patient and kind-' But his voice broke down, and he was forced silently to sign to her to leave him.
'Can humiliation go farther!' he thought. 'My boasted independence ending in this poor, faithful servant being stung, by the sneers of this hired woman, into eking out her scanty meals with her own insufficient wages!'
Little Catharine, who had been gazing with dilated black eyes, came scrambling on his knee to caress him, perceiving that he was grieved.
'Ah! Kitty, Kitty!' he said, 'it is well that you are too young to feel these troubles!'
'Papa! letter!' cried Kitty, waving the unregarded letter in the triumph of discovery.
'The Reverend James Frost.' It was the writing formed by his own copies, which he could not see without a sharp pang of self-reproach for cruel injustice and unkindness.
Kitty slid down with the empty envelope to act reading to the twins, whom she caught by turns as they crawled away, and set up straight before her. Her operations and their remonstrances, though as loud as they were inarticulate, passed utterly unheard and unheeded by their father, as he read:-
'Hotel du Grand Monarque. Aix-la-Chapelle, Sept. 18th.
'My Dearest James,-As a mere matter of honesty and justice, I may venture to write to you. You always accepted from dear grandmamma the income from the money in the Stocks. I did not know that half of it has since come to me, till Lord Ormersfield paid me this last year's dividend; and if you will not have his enclosed cheque for it, put it in the fire, for I will never have it in any form. It is not my uncle's, but my own; and if you would make me very happy, write to me here. You must not suppose that I am trying to buy a letter; but I look on this as yours, and I thought you had it till Lord Ormersfield told me about it. We met him and Louis quite unexpectedly-the best thing that has happened to me for years, though they told me much that grieves me exceedingly-but I cannot write about it till I know that I may. Tell me of dear Isabel and the babes. My heart yearns after them! it would leap up at the sight of a stone from the Terrace!